Method
How the estimates are made
You pick a current UK visa. The planner covers the original five paths (Skilled Worker; family; Student → Graduate → Skilled Worker; Global Talent; 10-year long residence) and also Innovator Founder, Scale-up, International Sportsperson, Minister of Religion, Global Business Mobility, Youth Mobility, Ancestry, BN(O), HPI, protection, EUSS, dependants, and child registration. It can chain planned switches, combine lawful time toward 10-year long residence, and sketch ILR or registration for a household.
ILR applications can often be submitted up to 28 days before the qualifying date. British citizenship is estimated as 12 months after ILR, or — if you are married to a British citizen — the later of ILR and 3 years’ residence (ILR must still come first). Children born in the UK whose parent later settles, or children under 18 with a British parent, may register rather than naturalise. These are common patterns — not a full reading of the Nationality Act or the Immigration Rules.
The absence tracker counts whole days from departure up to (not including) the return date, then checks a rolling 12-month window against 180 days and citizenship limits of 90 / 270 / 450 days. The switching simulator is a what-if: it does not check salary, endorsement or relationship rules. The fee calculator uses Home Office amounts from 8 April 2026 plus a typical English-test estimate.
The timeline includes typical Home Office decision waits and application windows — for example, ILR can usually be submitted up to 28 days before the qualifying date. A colour-coded calendar sketches continuous residence from logged trips, and a “what if” tool lets you test an extra absence without saving it. Decision waits and calendar colours are estimates, not a Home Office calculation.
Official application forms stay on GOV.UK and in your UKVI account. This planner can copy dates into a pack for you to paste, but it cannot pre-fill or submit a Home Office form, check eVisa status, or read VFS/TLS appointment slots. English and Life in the UK tests are booked on the provider or GOV.UK sites; results are saved here only if you type them. Calendar (.ics) import and optional GPS can suggest absences — there is no Google, Outlook or TripIt login. Reminders are calendar files, browser alerts, or your own email — GOV.UK Notify is only for public-sector services. You can export a redacted JSON or PDF, or (when signed in) a revocable read-only link.
Encoded rules were last reviewed on 2026-08-01. The planner can poll the official GOV.UK Content API for page update timestamps (not HTML scraping) and keeps a versioned list of facts it actually encodes — for example the 8 April 2026 fee table versus earlier tables whose amounts are not invented here. Official explanations live on GOV.UK, including Indefinite leave to remain, British citizenship, and each visa page linked from your plan. If something looks wrong, report inaccurate information.
Readiness scores, route rankings and anonymous timeline comparisons are sketches from your answers. They are not a model trained on Home Office files and they are not an approval probability. The guidance assistant answers from a short FAQ with a legal disclaimer on every reply.
The dashboard opens on the next 90 days: visa expiry, tests, the ILR 28-day window, and evidence still to gather, each tied to an encoded fact with an effective date. Cases that look non-straightforward (for example visitor leave or a sketched 180-day absence risk) point to the official adviser register, not a paid instruction inside this app.
Signed-in accounts store the plan in a local database (email, visa type, dates, absences, route selection, reminders). Passport numbers are not collected. Guest plans stay in this browser only. You can export or delete that data from the account page. Optional document copies in the vault are encrypted on this device and never uploaded; pasted text is scanned locally so expiry dates can populate reminders, and only the last four characters of a detected identity number are kept.
Route dates, absences and fees are calculated in this browser. Document scans are encrypted on the device (AES-GCM) and are never uploaded to S3 or our API. Rule updates, reminder requests and anonymous benchmarks use an in-process event bus — not Kafka or AWS SQS. This is a modular monolith, not a mesh of microservices. Security and architecture.
You can preview Basic, Pro and Premium feature sets from the pricing page. Those prices are indicative; this prototype does not take payment. Adviser cards are layout examples — always use the official OISC / SRA registers. Employer tools sketch visa expiry and send you to GOV.UK for right-to-work checks.